Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, Vol 52, Issue 4 S200-S211, Copyright © 1997 by The Gerontological Society of America
Social support and depressive symptoms: differential patterns in wife and daughter caregivers
LW Li, MM Seltzer and JS Greenberg
Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. Li@waisman.wisc.edu
This cross-sectional study examined how three types of social support-
social participation, emotional support, and caregiving support-were
related to depressive symptoms in wives caring for their elderly husband
and daughters caring for their elderly parent. We investigated whether
different dimensions of social support affect mental health via different
mechanisms and whether the context in which the support is needed and
received will temper its effects. We found that social participation had a
main effect on depressive symptoms for daughters but not for wives.
Emotional support buffered the stress emanating from the husband's behavior
problems for wives. For daughters, emotional support buffered the stress
emanating from both the behavior problems and the ADL/IADL limitations of
the parent care recipient. Using caregiving as the example, our data
suggested that social support does not have uniform effects; rather, the
type of stressor, the type of social support, and the individual context
interact to result in the specific effect of support.
